Open Panzer board issues

[M1A2AbramsTuskII]

So, I recently purchased a Open Panzer Board and I'm having some issues.

I have everything hooked up as the wiki on the OP Website says. I use 2 separate ESC's and have the control in the motors setting of OP Config setup for this. But when everything is plugged in, I have no motor power. Gun elevation, turret rotation, and recoil works, but drive doesn't. Here's my current setup:

Radiomaster TX12 radio
BetaFPV SuperP SBus receiver (I plugged it into the right port)
Spektrum 70A brushed esc (center pin removed)
Spektrum 35T brushed motor

I will also add that the radio does NOT have a self return stick for the throttle. Therefore I'm using the transmission Forward/Reverse/Neutral feature and have it assigned to a 3 position switch. Not sure what's happening here, so some help on the issue would be greatly appreciated!

[LukeZ]

Hi Abrams, since your elevation and other stuff works, we can conclude that your transmitter and receiver are working fine, and the TCB is able to read the radio signals from the receiver just fine.

I don't think the manual transmission is a problem, but it definitely complicates things for troubleshooting and trying to get setup on new equipment.

Looking at the manual for your ESC, it appears it wants you to perform a calibration (you'll have to do it twice, once for each ESC). Note that since you're using the manual transmission, throttle "neutral" will actually be when your stick is held low, and full throttle will be with the stick held high. But of course, you'll have to swap between forward and reverse and then hold the stick high to teach the ESC the forward and reverse levels at the appropriate steps. While doing this calibration, make sure you don't move your stick left/right at all - because this would be a turn, and turns are accomplished by reducing the speed of one of the ESCs, so your calibration will be off.

If the calibration is too tricky, try doing it with your other stick that has self centering (ie, temporarily assign throttle to your turret elevation channel). That eliminates the extra complication of the manual transmission.

Your ESCs also have a bunch of settings, I don't think they're related to your current issue, but you might want to review those to see if they correspond to your setup. I'd probably turn of all the braking features, and most definitely you want to set the Max Reverse Force equal to the Max Forward Force (100%). Otherwise you are going to have weird driving behavior (the ESC assumes you're using it in a car, not in a tank where there need to be two ESCs coordinated with each other).

Your ESC manual also says there are LED(s) on the ESCs that might give you some useful information about what they think they are doing.

Other general things to check is that the channels all appear to be responding correctly and in the correct directions when you perform a Radio Setup in OP Config. You could also check the output of the board in Snoop mode, just to verify that your 3-position switch is actually changing between forward/neutral/reverse as you expect it to.

Basically, you have some troubleshooting to do in order to narrow down where the problem is coming from. Keep us posted.

[M1A2AbramsTuskII]

Hi Abrams, since your elevation and other stuff works, we can conclude that your transmitter and receiver are working fine, and the TCB is able to read the radio signals from the receiver just fine.

I don't think the manual transmission is a problem, but it definitely complicates things for troubleshooting and trying to get setup on new equipment.

Looking at the manual for your ESC, it appears it wants you to perform a calibration (you'll have to do it twice, once for each ESC). Note that since you're using the manual transmission, throttle "neutral" will actually be when your stick is held low, and full throttle will be with the stick held high. But of course, you'll have to swap between forward and reverse and then hold the stick high to teach the ESC the forward and reverse levels at the appropriate steps. While doing this calibration, make sure you don't move your stick left/right at all - because this would be a turn, and turns are accomplished by reducing the speed of one of the ESCs, so your calibration will be off.

If the calibration is too tricky, try doing it with your other stick that has self centering (ie, temporarily assign throttle to your turret elevation channel). That eliminates the extra complication of the manual transmission.

Your ESCs also have a bunch of settings, I don't think they're related to your current issue, but you might want to review those to see if they correspond to your setup. I'd probably turn of all the braking features, and most definitely you want to set the Max Reverse Force equal to the Max Forward Force (100%). Otherwise you are going to have weird driving behavior (the ESC assumes you're using it in a car, not in a tank where there need to be two ESCs coordinated with each other).

Your ESC manual also says there are LED(s) on the ESCs that might give you some useful information about what they think they are doing.

Other general things to check is that the channels all appear to be responding correctly and in the correct directions when you perform a Radio Setup in OP Config. You could also check the output of the board in Snoop mode, just to verify that your 3-position switch is actually changing between forward/neutral/reverse as you expect it to.

Basically, you have some troubleshooting to do in order to narrow down where the problem is coming from. Keep us posted.

OK, now when I push up the stick, the motor spins uncontrollably until I switch it to neutral... I also tried calibration but even with the self centering stick it wont calibrate reverse.

[LukeZ]

Well, unfortunately we still don't have enough information to know what the problem is. You have to try different things until you can find something that works, and then work back from there to the state that you want, until you discover the place where the issue is occurring. It's a process of experimentation.

Forget the TCB, and try connecting one of your ESCs directly to your receiver (on the channel of your self-centering stick) and see if you can perform the calibration, and whether the ESC behaves as you expect. If that works, then add back the TCB, using the same channel of your self-centering stick, and see if the behavior is the same.